Wednesday, December 16, 2015

While the main players in the abortion industry have been relatively quiet regarding Anna Yocca being charged with attempted murder after trying to self-abort at 24 weeks with coathanger, pro-abortion columnist Jessica Valenti is not.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL probably understand it doesn't make sense to go all in defending a woman who severely injured her viable son while trying to kill him. That's not the best PR case since the kid survived with horrible injuries. But the only brand Valenti has to protect is her being more pro-abortion than anyone else which is why she argues Yocca's plight deserves our empathy.

In a just world, this news would provoke empathetic outrage – Yocca’s desperation and inability to obtain a safe abortion prove that we are shamefully failing women.

In a just world, this news would provoke empathetic outrage for the defenseless child, not the attacker. You know, the one who Yocca violently attacked and grievously injured. Unsurprisingly, Valenti doesn’t mention the injuries the child sustained. That might lead her readers to place their empathy towards the human being who deserves it.

He will need a medically-experienced foster parent, remain on oxygen and take medication daily because of problems with his eyes, lungs and heart stemming from damage caused by the coat hanger.

Valenti also provides no evidence that Yocca was unable to obtain a safe abortion. We've heard nothing as to why Yocca waited until 24 weeks and then tried to self-abort. Murfreesboro is less than an hour from Nashville, where there is an abortion clinic. Yocca had a job at Amazon fulfillment center. She has a boyfriend. She’s 31. She’s not some scared teenager without any resources. She’s a grown adult. Next, Valenti will be asking for a empathetic outrage for Kimberly Pappas, not the newborn baby boy she suffocated in a bag in her desk.

If you have more empathy for the woman stabbing her unborn child with a coathanger than the child she is stabbing, you may just be a psychopath.

Valenti continues:

But we don’t live in a just world. We live in a world, in a country,
where women who want to end their pregnancies are considered
contemptible. And so Yocca, after her 24-week fetus was delivered, was arrested for first-degree attempted murder.

Well, that's what happens when you repeatedly stab a viable child with a coathanger. And yes, that's more just than ignoring what Yocca did or treated her actions like they deserve empathy. Also notice how Valenti calls the child a "fetus" after the child was delivered. I guess that allows her to completely ignore what that child went through and will go through the rest of his life because of his mother's actions.

Valenti then goes after a police officer who responded as any sane individual would:

In an interview with local media,
police sergeant Kyle Evans – displaying an incredible amount of
anti-abortion bias – said that Yocca “wanted to kill the child” and that
she “made very incriminating statements ... regarding wanting to end
the child’s life”. (Apparently wanting an abortion is criminal.)

Well, yes in this case (as the Washington Post explains) attempting a self-abortion and injuring the unborn child is against the law in Tennessee. How is it anti-abortion bias to point out the obvious (Yocca "wanted to kill the child")? Is it because he used the word "child"? Is the 1.5 pound baby boy not a child because Yocca tried to kill him?

The Guardian had to issue a correction to the piece after Valenti originally claimed thousands of women were dying "every year" before Roe.

This piece was amended on 15 December 2015 to clarify that thousands of women died as a result of illegal abortions before Roe v Wade. An earlier version of this piece said thousands died every year.

That’s just embarrassing. Valenti has been writing about abortion for more than a decade yet she still thought thousands of women died every year before Roe v. Wade? It takes an epic level of thoughtlessness and complete lack of research to believe that. Or maybe she intentionally lied and thought she could get away with it.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

GotNews.com has posted a short segment of a conversation between undercover reporters of the Center for Medical Progress and Deb VanderHei at the National Abortion Federation Conference on April 21, 2015. GotNews claims it was released to them by source on Capitol Hill and more segment will be released.

During the conversation, VanderHei mentions that some affiliates may want to increase revenue by selling the body parts of aborted children and that Planned Parenthood national offices could nothing about it if they did.

The city will pay each of the plaintiffs nominal damages of $1, and a total of $56,500 in legal fees, according to a consent judgment approved Oct. 8 by Judge Nancy Torresen in U.S. District Court in Portland.

The nonprofit has started a $2 million capital campaign and already has raised $1.2 million toward the project, Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Tiffany Harms said. The facility will replace its existing health center, 123 E. Indiana Ave., and is slated to open in winter 2017, according to the release. It will be built just east of the current health center, which will be torn down once the new one is open.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

In a recent column for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik writes about StemExpress, a company which buys fetal parts from Planned Parenthood affiliates in California. Hiltzik bemoans that StemExpress has been “terrorized” and “harassed” into ending their business relationship with Planned Parenthood. StemExpress executives were allegedly caught on undercover video discussing their acquisition of intact aborted children. They’ve sued the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) to prevent the release of the video and been asked by Congress to provide information on their relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Hiltzik’s column is so filled with misinformation and broad assertions about the videos, it made me wonder if he’s even seen the videos he’s discussing. They seem like talking points which come directly from Planned Parenthood and StemExpress. He doesn’t even mention that a former StemExpress employee is featured in 3 of the 7 videos which means he hasn’t seen those videos or he prefers to not let his readers know that. Writing a column about videos he hasn't even watched, didn't seem that out of the blue for a guy caught sock-puppeting.

So I bet $10 that he hadn’t seen the videos on twitter. He retweeted me and said he’d seen all the footage and read all the transcripts and asked if I had.

That led me to a couple of questions. First, if Hiltzik watched the full footage of the videos then why does he claim in his column that “Because the released videos have been heavily edited, CMP's assertions that the officials are acting illegally must be treated with great doubt.”

If he’s seen the full videos and CMP’s assertions are clearly false then why couldn’t he devote a paragraph or two in his long column to demonstrating why they are false?

He could show that Mary Gatter wasn’t really haggling over the price of specimens or that Deborah Nucatola wasn’t really talking about how she changes her technique to get more intact organs, right?

Why would he instead use the “but they’re heavily edited” excuse? Either because he hasn't watched the videos or he's intentionally misleading his readers.

I then asked him what event led Nucatola to become an abortionist. If he watched the full footage of all the videos (heck, if he just watched the full footage of the first one) he would easily be able to answer this question. Instead, he blocked me.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Planned Parenthood has be wounded and Cecile Richards knows it. For years, undercover actors have tormented their organization and led Planned Parenthood to institute various trainings to prevent their affiliates and abortionists from being caught on camera saying or doing something which could hurt their brand.

And now one (possibly more depending on future videos) of her leading executives (senior medical director Deborah Nucatola) got caught doing just that.

Unless David Daleiden and Center for Medical Progress’ future videos have more than this, I don’t see anyone at Planned Parenthood being prosecuted for selling unborn body parts or performing partial-birth abortions (especially since Nucatola discusses using digoxin, which kills the child, prior to doing late-term abortions).

However, this video (and more soon to follow) strike a blow at Planned Parenthood and increase the stigma of abortion just as Planned Parenthood’s PR team has been working to reduce the stigma attached to abortion. It’s much harder to reduce abortion stigma when your senior medical director is nonchalantly talking about preserving hearts, liver, lungs, and lower extremities of unborn children by crushing above and below the child’s torso. If only Nucatola had said “gentle squeeze above” and “gently squeeze below.”

While Planned Parenthood tries to downplay the short video because it was edited, the full video is a treasure trove of information for prolifers as abortionists and abortion advocates are rarely this honest about what they do. Nucatola reveals the following:

Abortionists on the west coast use digoxin to kill the child during late-term abortions while abortionists on the east coast do not. She describes this as a culture war and discusses how she couldn’t get feuding sides to agree on a study to see which method was safer.

Planned Parenthood has a lowly view of many independent abortion providers

Planned Parenthood has 40% of the abortion market share, knows this and is proud of it

Nucatola sought out advice on how to “frame” the use of fetal organs for research and Planned Parenthood struggles with how to discuss the issue

Planned Parenthood is scared to bring any abortion case before the Supreme Court with its current composition and knew they were going to lose Hobby Lobby and the free speech buffer-zone law case

Nucatola was very open with trying to help the actors get in contact with a number of other abortionists and abortion clinic and even suggested they do a workshop at an abortion conference

Nucatola became an abortionist because during her residency because she treated a woman who died from complications from a legal abortion (this is not something Planned Parenthood would ever want to share publicly)

Cecile Richards couldn't defend Nucatola being open about what abortion does, so she released a video defending Planned Parenthood while apologizing for Nucatola's "tone and statements" without ever clarifying which statements were unacceptable and why they were unacceptable. She basically apologizes for Nucatola being honest about what abortion does while eating lunch. That this honesty (all that baby organ and crushing talk) was recorded and seen by millions is what is unacceptable to Richards. Who knows if Nucatola will be demoted or fired. Planned Parenthood probably feels that can't publicly fire her now as that would admit some great wrongdoing by Nucatola and lead to another day of news stories.

The brand is damaged and I hope future videos will damage it more. Planned Parenthood put themselves in this position by intentionally becoming the giant in the abortion industry. When you're the leader in the industry you have to defend your product. Planned Parenthood would rather sell their product behind closed doors than defend it out in the open. We can't let them do that.

Thursday, July 09, 2015

A Florida woman who shot herself in the stomach, killing her unborn child at 36 weeks, is claiming she didn’t think the gun was loaded. I'm interested to see how abortion advocates will react. It's her body, her choice, right?

Ruiz's husband walked into the bedroom on Interchange Drive and saw her pointing the gun at her abdomen, police said.

He tried to wrestle the gun out of her hands, but it went off, piercing his hand, her torso, and the stomach of the unborn child, police said.

Ruiz was rushed to Holmes Regional Medical Center, where doctors performed an emergency Caesarean section. But the baby did not survive.

The Brevard County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide by a gunshot wound.

In medical examiner's records, he listed as Baby Boy Ruiz, age 0.

Two Canadian hospitals performed abortions on a girl before she turned 13 and never reported sexual abuse. The girl was repeatedly victimized by her stepfather and he was only caught when arrested assaulting other victims.

At the time, her stepfather had sole custody of her and repeatedly sexually assaulted her.

Each time she got pregnant, she had an abortion; once at a Winnipeg hospital and once at a hospital out of province.

Court documents show the girl was instructed to tell medical staff her boyfriend was the father.

But the passage of Obamacare seemed to alert Republican lawmakers to the fact that abortion was being covered in insurance plans, and more than 20 GOP-led state legislatures have since passed laws banning private insurance companies from covering abortion.

Yes, they just realized that private insurance companies coverage abortion and never knew that beforehand. It had nothing to do with the fact that Obamacare subsidized (with taxpayer money) insurance plans that cover abortion unless states prevented that.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

This is too much. On June 12th, the Washington Post published a self-defeating piece by Jill Filipovic which used the examples of a politician who lost by 26%, a movie that flopped despite inordinate pro-abortion support and another politician who was lost and was almost universally ridiculed for making abortion the center point of his campaign to argue how the new abortion advocates will end the stigma on abortion by being more forthright when talking about abortion.

In her piece, Filipovic also mentioned how the new generation of abortion advocates aren’t going to focus solely on “good abortions” anymore (my emphasis).

While advocacy organizations have long used the horrors of dangerous pre-Roe abortions and particularly tragic stories of rape or severe fetal abnormalities to illustrate the need for abortion rights, younger women are pushing back on what they call the narrative of “the good abortion.” Instead, they’re talking about the whole range of their experiences, including the nearly 90 percent of elective abortions that occur during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Most women who terminate pregnancies aren’t facing life-threatening tragedies but rather more mundane ones: The most common reasons women give include not being financially ready, poor timing for a baby, issues with a partner and the need to care for the children they already have. Activists say playing down that reality — and the importance of abortion services for all women — contributes to the stigma that keeps abortion shameful and politically contentious.

Today (June 17th) that same abortion advocates writes in Cosmopolitan about abortion funds and uses a “good abortion” story to support how claim for how important they are.

Last month, Alicia*, a 23-year-old who recently moved to Idaho, found out she was pregnant. The guy she was dating lived in another state, and at first she didn't tell him. Then when he came to visit to her, he got so drunk and violent the secret came out when she was pleading with him not to hit her. He accused her of lying, called her a series of derisive names, told her he didn't care what she did, and drove off. They haven't spoken since.

Notice the focus on the dire details in the woman's life. She recently moved to Idaho. The father of the child is supposedly a violent drunk who called her names. This is a "good abortion" designed to make you feel sorry for the woman.

She then uses another one:

"I had a call from a gal in Boise, Idaho, probably five years ago," said Pencke, who lives in Seattle. "She was living in a one-room apartment with her 18-month-old son. I could hardly get her to talk at first. She just answered monosyllabically. She was pregnant? Yes. She wanted to be? No. She was married? Yes."

The woman's husband had more or less abandoned her, taking a job as a long-haul trucker in Alaska, and periodically sending small amounts of money; he had gotten her pregnant when he came home for a weekend. She only had a little bit of food in her home. She was afraid to tell her husband she was pregnant because he might get upset and hit her.

Surprise, surprise. The abortion advocate who bragged about the supposed pushing back against the "good abortion" narrative is pushing another "good abortion" narrative where the woman has been abandoned by her supposedly violent husband in a one-room apartment with little food.

The underlying message is that "she obviously needs an abortion" as oppose to the supposed new message about "the importance of abortion services for all women."

Then there is this story which basically only a sociopath would use as an example of the great work of abortion funds.

"We had a 16-year-old undocumented young woman and her father contact us," Atwater said. "He is a single father, also undocumented, and living in Idaho. The daughter had just found out she was pregnant, and based on an estimate of her very irregular period, she thought she was 18 weeks. She scheduled an appointment with the closest provider who offered 18-week procedures, which was in Portland, so they packed up their stuff, got in the car, drove to five hours or so to Portland for the procedure, and got there and found out she was actually 25 weeks and not 18 weeks. So they had to drive to Seattle for an appointment the next day [to the only clinic in the area that would perform a procedure after 24.5 weeks] and they planned to sleep in their car. The ultimate price was $4,500."

CAIR, along with the National Abortion Federation and an Oregon-based abortion fund, were able to help them cover the cost.

Bragging about helping a girl electively abort a viable child. That is seriously deranged.

Also, does anyone else wonder about the possibilities of this girl being the victim of incest? Father involved in contacting the funds, young (who knows if she was actually 16 since she was undocumented), very far along in her pregnancy. That possibility probably never crossed the mind of the abortion funds which doled out the money.

The hours-long attack allegedly occurred in 2013, but the girl stayed quiet until another woman, who said she witnessed part of the assault, took her to a police station May 22.

The girl said she became pregnant after she was sexually assaulted by a family member in August 2012 in the 1200 block of North Masters Drive, near Lake June Road, according to an affidavit.

She told police she was a virgin before she was raped and “did not tell anyone about the sexual assault because … she was embarrassed.”

Police said the girl’s relatives found out between January and March 2013 that she was pregnant and “became very nervous and were concerned about … [Child Protective Services] removing children from the residence,” the affidavit says.

He agreed to resign from the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, and never re-apply, after admitting to professional misconduct. The committee went on to "roundly condemn" his ineffective infection control, improper delegation to his staff, poor record keeping, and rude, aggressive style of communication. Sim's only response to the reprimand was "Thank you sir." Outside the hearing room, however, he was flippant and dismissive of the misconduct to which he had just admitted.

The clinic, the court heard, wanted the council to use its power to demand names and addresses from protesters and to issue them with prohibition notices, or to consider imposing exclusion zones similar to those outside abortion clinics in parts of the US and Canada.

I followed my trainer to the lab where products of conception (P.O.C.) were inspected to make sure the doctor removed all the bits that, if left behind, could cause an infection. My trainer made a point to show me the tiny arms and legs floating in the glass baking pan. At 10 weeks and beyond, those appendages are formed and clearly recognizable.

It was all so heavy. The loneliness of those little arms and legs. That girl, so clearly suffering during the procedure. Before my job at the clinic, my stance on abortion had been so black and white. I had been firmly pro-choice for as long as I could remember. Was it possible that working here could change my mind?

Of course not. This piece is in Salon (my emphasis).

Abortion is fraught with so much negative sentiment, and in a sense, abortion is plucking a life from existence that has yet to have the opportunity to thrive. No one is claiming it’s pleasant. There is nothing black and white about abortion. It’s every shade of gray. But for us pro-choicers, the woman’s life trumps the embryo or fetus. That’s the bottom line. We place value on a woman’s ability to know what is best for her. It simply needs to be a safe and legal option.

In a sense? No. In reality.

What I noticed is how Beeman admitted earlier that the unborn have tiny arms and legs, yet goes on to use the intentionally dehumanizing term “unwanted growth” to describe them as if the human individual these arms and legs were torn from was like a wart on a foot.

Seeing every side, the whole complicated and profound process, I came out more pro-choice than ever. I started to see it from a purely biological standpoint. We were removing an unwanted growth to preserve the woman’s chosen course.

This seems to be a somewhat common phenomenon with pro-choicers who recognize the humanity of the unborn. On one hand, they’ll admit the unborn are living human beings (or something similar) and then go on to argue in favor of abortion from a bodily autonomy viewpoint. However, they later use terms which intentionally dehumanize the unborn. Beeman even laughably claims this is a "purely biological standpoint" as if her rhetoric had anything to do with biology.

I always wonder why. If the bottom line is that a woman's life (well, not really her life but how she wants to live her life) trumps the life of the unborn then why the need to intentionally dehumanize the unborn?

My thought is that the idea that a woman should be able to kill the helpless human being living inside for whatever reason she wants is not a position most people are comfortable defending even if that's the actual reason they favor legal abortion. It's much easier to push those tiny arms and legs aside and imagine the unborn as a bunion or a pimple because making the bodily autonomy argument is much easier if another human being isn't being torn apart.

Friday, May 08, 2015

A convicted con artist duped the state into paying for her late-term
abortion, a procedure which otherwise would not have been funded with
public money, according to court records.

Chalice Renee Zeitner
made up a story about having cancer in order to qualify for an abortion
while on Arizona’s Medicaid insurance, and forged a doctor’s note to
support her claim, according to charging documents.

A doctor performed the abortion when Zeitner was 22-weeks pregnant......

They realized they got conned when she went to the same doctor to deliver a child a year later and the doctor noticed she didn't have cancer. Why it took 3-4 years from that point to issue charges isn't explained.

Here's the saddest part.

Zeitner’s aborted child was born alive, weighing just more than one pound, documents state.

“The baby lived for approximately 20 minutes and received no life-saving measure by hospital staff,” according to documents.

Thursday, May 07, 2015

Jonathan Tobin writes about how abortion advocates are often anti-science when it comes to late-term abortions in light of the recent New England Journal of Medicine study on the viability of premature children born at 22 weeks.

But for much of our political establishment, inconvenient facts such as those put forward by the New England Journal must be disregarded. Instead of coming to grips with the fact that allowing the practice of late term abortion is enabling the slaughter of many babies that could live, they remain in denial. Instead they make national heroines of politicians like Wendy Davis who filibustered a late term abortion bill that would protect the lives of infants that we know might be able to live apart from their mother if given sufficient medical care.

The Legislative Audit Council said in a report that DHEC provided auditors with records for only 33 of the 42 inspections that should have been conducted from 2001 to 2014 at the three clinics in Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville.

The council also found that, with the exception of an expired license, DHEC imposed no penalties for violations, including for repeat violations such as expired medications and failure to properly dispose of medications, which could have brought fines of up to $1,000 on a second offense. Auditors suggested DHEC enforce a system of graduated penalties if repeat violations are found.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

I headed to the clinic a week later with just a book, a water bottle, my Harvard ID, and a locket containing a picture of my ex-boyfriend and me. The procedure didn’t take long. It wasn’t even that physically painful. But when it was over, I screamed. I couldn’t stop screaming. As I write these words, it has been over a month since the abortion—and on the inside that screaming hasn’t stopped.

The next time someone claims that “no one is pro-abortion” you can feel free to share this article with them.

Recently, the Daily Kos published an article titled I Am Pro-Choice, Not Pro-Abortion. “Has anyone ever truly been pro-abortion?” one commenter asked.

Uh. Yes. Me. That would be me.

I am pro-abortion like I’m pro-knee-replacement and pro-chemotherapy and pro-cataract surgery. As the last protection against ill-conceived childbearing when all else fails, abortion is part of a set of tools that help women and men to form the families of their choosing. I believe that abortion care is a positive social good. I suspect that a lot of other people secretly believe the same thing. And I think it’s time we said so.

As the second oral argument drew near in October 1972, Hammond wrote a game-changing bench memo to Powell, pointing out a recent federal court case out of a lower court in Connecticut that had address that state’s abortion statute. In what lawyer’s call dicta (meaning not critical to the opinion), the Connecticut judges argued that the critical line in any pregnancy was “viability,” that is, when the fetus could live outside the womb—roughly the end of the sixth month.

No one argued “viability” in the briefs or in oral argument. Yet it was Powell who gently suggested to Blackmun that the Court consider and accept “viability” as its important dividing line. The Court adopted a three-part test, according to the trimesters of a nine-month pregnancy, but decided that the rights of a fetus were not to be considered until viability. While the other parts of Roe have dissolved, “viability” remains the law today.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

So the month long game of chicken on human trafficking legislation has ended and it looks like the GOP and prolife groups won.

According to Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, the money has been split so that restrictions on abortion do not apply to fees collected for the victims, which Democrats said constituted an expansion of abortion limitations. The segregated fund would pay for law enforcement services and shelters, not medical services.

Money for medical services for the victims would be fenced off in a fund furnished by taxpayer money. Federal restrictions on abortion funding would apply to that fund.

So no federal funding for abortion, right? Pro-choice groups must be disappointed, right?

BREAKING: The Senate has reached an agreement on #JVTA that provides survivors with needed svcs & does not expand #Hyde. #WomenOverPolitics

Now if I was a pro-choicer I would read “needed svcs” as abortion since for the wholemonth Planned Parenthood hasbeen saying abortion needs to be funded for victims of trafficking.

Their next tweet declares that various politicians held the line and preventing Hyde from being extended and the only bad news is that is the legislation was delayed a month.

That’s a hilarious claim of winning after less than a week ago, Planned Parenthood and NARAL co-issued a press release which urged the Senate to pass a “clean bill” and “reject any attempt to deny survivors of human trafficking access to the full range of reproductive health care, including safe and legal abortion.”

While Planned Parenthood was busy lying through their teeth and acting like the legislation meets their goals, NARAL was being more genuine and admitting that federal funds aren’t going to be used to pay for abortions.

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue made this statement in response to the announced compromise over the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act:

"This bill, and the deal reached, are a perfect example of why the so-called Hyde amendment is bad policy and harmful to women. Because of the Hyde amendment, this bill still denies the most vulnerable women necessary access to vital health services.

When we are talking about a community in which up to eighty percent of victims end up pregnant, often multiple times, it is unconscionable that Republicans are willing to cast aside the rights and freedoms of women and families, particularly the survivors of human and sex trafficking, by denying them the full range of health care they deserve.

So while Planned Parenthood was telling its members and the media that the bill “provides survivors of human trafficking with immediate access to needed health care services,” NARAL was saying the exact opposite.

Monday, April 20, 2015

To your average prolife observer (including myself) this tweet from a NARAL affiliate comes off as being opposed to the "Crimes Against Pregnant Women" legislation. The first thing that comes into a prolifer's head is "What? Those crazy pro-aborts are now opposed to harsh penalties for people who attack pregnant women and kill their unborn children."

Prolife legislators have introduced the Offenses Against Unborn Children legislation which includes the unborn as persons for homicide and assault charges and makes exemptions for abortion and actions the mother takes against herself.

Pro-choice legislators already passed the Crimes Against Pregnant Women legislation which made various crimes against pregnant women that result in the death of her child to be felonies of differing classes. For example, the unlawful termination of pregnancy in the first degree is a class 3 felony. It's a class 2 felony if the mother dies.

For pro-choice groups, the unborn child can never be the victim. For them, if a woman is attacked and her unborn child dies, there is no homicide. There is just an attack on the mother.

So NARAL Colorado's tweet is attempting to say that Colorado shouldn't pass the Offenses Against Unborn Children legislation because the Crimes Against Pregnant Women is already on the books but does so in such a muddled way that it leaves readers with the impression NARAL Colorado opposes harsh penalties for ending pregnancy against a mother's wishes when they don't.

NARAL Colorado also didn't respond to any of the numerous tweets asking about their tweet/position. If you don't clarify quickly, your lack of response seems like an indication you believe what people think you believe. That's social media 101.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

There's no shortage of these laughably absurd anecdotes, and NARAL is now hoping to shed light on the manipulative tactics and misinformation of crisis pregnancy centers through an unconventional advocacy event this week in Oakland: a comedy show.....

On April 16 at the New Parkway (474 24th St., Oakland), four comedians will speak out about crisis pregnancy centers as part of a comedy event NARAL is organizing called Stand Up for Choice. The show will feature Kurt Braunohler, a Los Angeles-based comedian and the event's headliner; Nato Green, a San Francisco-based comic and San Francisco Examiner columnist; Aparna Nancherla, a New York-based comic and former writer for W. Kamau Bell's show Totally Biased; and Eliza Skinner, an LA-based comic and Funny or Die writer. Their stand-up routines will touch on CPCs and other topics.....

A majority of the centers — some licensed as community clinics by the state, others unlicensed — referred to fetuses as "babies" and told the women they were "already a mother," NARAL reported.

NARAL’s next move will apparently be to make fun of baby showers and anyone who uses the term baby bump.

Bloomberg has an article where Congresswoman Renee Elmers signals she is in favor of a revised version of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Ellmers said the new version, as shown to her, would no longer require victims of rape to report the crime to law enforcement if they wish to have a late-term abortion under the law. She said the physician would have to know this was a pregnancy as a result of a rape.

Utilizing state-level variation in access to EBC, we find that providing individuals with over-the-counter access to EBC leads to increase STD rates and has no effect on abortion rates. Moreover, individual-level analysis using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth indicates that risky sexual behavior such as engaging in unprotected sex and number of sexual encounters increases as a result of over-the-counter access to EBC, which is consistent with the state-level STD findings.

Monday, April 13, 2015

The opening of a Planned Parenthood in El Centro, California has been delayed in opening because they didn’t pass the fire inspection.

At the clinic's final inspection, the city's fire chief said the building had been incorrectly classified. The new classification requires the clinic to add a fire-suppression system and other expensive improvements.

Planned Parenthood officials said the city is responding to pressure from people who don't want the clinic to open.

El Centro Fire Chief Kenneth Herbert said that had nothing to do with his decision.

"I've got a job to do and it's about protecting life, enforcing life safety code and such, and I've never been one to bow to pressure," Herbert said.

The editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle is upset prolifers have used environmental law to prevent Planned Parenthood from converting a building into an abortion clinic.

In the lawsuit, Respect Life South San Francisco alleged that the city should have conducted an environmental review before approving the renewal of a vacant downtown building into a health clinic. The lawsuit has held up the conversion for 18 months and counting.....

We can now add women’s health services to the toll of public goods that have been stymied by the California Legislature’s refusal to stand up to the interest groups who seem to think CEQA should remain carved in stone. It needs reform so that it no longer provides a free pass into court for people whose real agendas have nothing to do with the environment.

You must also be sure to have the best prenatal care possible, so your child will be born healthy. Planned Parenthood has clinics where this care is offered, and you should contact it as soon as possible. If you check its website, www.plannedparenthood.org, you also will find information about adoption.

These unwanted children fare less well in life than their peers. Their social handicaps persist at least into adulthood. Under-employment, poverty, and dependency on social services are other consequences of denied abortions.

You know who fares far less than their peers? Children who are aborted.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Police arrested a driver Monday night who they say threw a flaming object from a car near the Planned Parenthood clinic on East Ben White Boulevard near South Congress. Austin police received the call shortly after 6 p.m., and members of the bomb squad responded. No one was injured and nothing was damaged, police said.

Sex trafficking is a crime that almost exclusively victimizes women and girls. According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, 90 percent of sex trafficking victims in the United States last year were female. Shaheen is refusing to help these abuse victims until Republicans agree to make taxpayers finance abortions. What a loathsome, cowardly, cynical thing to do.

He said von Wiese-Mack had "forced" her daughter, Heather Mack, to have two earlier abortions and was seeking legal control so that she could compel a third procedure to terminate the teen's latest pregnancy.

Mack, 19, gave birth this week to a girl in an Indonesian hospital. She and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, 21, of Oak Park, are charged with murder in her mother's August death. They could face a firing squad if convicted.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Is a California Planned Parenthood employee shipping pounds of pot? That what it sounds like to me.

This week a Planned Parenthood in California received a package with their address as the return address after the postal service was unable to deliver the package to an address in Georgia. Some employees were suspicious of the package so they called in the bomb squad which found:

Inside the package was about four pounds of marijuana, baby diapers and a thank you card, Swithenbank said.

The card wasn’t written on in the inside, but was left blank with a generic greeting, he said.

Prior to March 10, no Democrats opposed the bill and Planned Parenthood and NARAL didn’t issue a peep about it. Since the afternoon of March 10, when Barbara Boxer dropped her support and Planned Parenthood decided to launch its public relations campaign against the bill, Planned Parenthood has tweeted some 60 times trying to gin up opposition — more than 60 percent of its tweets during that time. Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, tweeted a couple dozen times, also beginning on March 10. And NARAL tweeted against the bill nearly 47 times, again beginning on March 10. Heck, almost like it was all coordinated.

It’s certainly not a surprise that the Democratic Party is so controlled by Planned Parenthood, but it was still remarkable to watch the whole thing transpire in real time.

One way of examining the question of whether hardship is at the root of the unplanned-baby gap is to ask whether locales with more publicly funded family-planning clinics have less unplanned pregnancy. Guttmacher estimates the percentage of the need for publicly funded services that is met in each state and the number of women per 1,000 who have unplanned pregnancies. But as the scatterplot below shows, there is no solid relationship between the two. Alaska and California outperform other states in terms of servicing needy women: About 60 percent of the need for publicly funded care is met. The states' unintended-pregnancy rates, though not the highest in the nation, are still impressive: 50 out of every 1,000 women. That’s about the same as a number of states, including Arizona, Ohio, and Illinois, that are only helping about 20 percent of the women who need it. That sure makes it look like money and access by themselves cannot explain the unplanned-pregnancy gap

"As the Wisconsin legislature moves forward in the coming session, further protections for mother and child are likely to come to my desk in the form of a bill to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks," his letter said. "I will sign that bill when it gets to my desk and support similar legislation on the federal level.”

Jefferson Healthcare officials are in the process of responding to an ACLU letter dated Feb. 18 that challenges the local public health care system’s failure to offer abortions. In that letter, ACLU policy council official Leah Rutman asks Jefferson Healthcare to “change its policies and practices to fulfill its obligations” with the 1991 Reproductive Privacy Act (RPA).

“We believe that Jefferson Healthcare’s failure to provide abortion services violates state law,” Rutman wrote. “Our goal is to ensure that women seeking reproductive health care services at Jefferson Healthcare have access to the full range of services as required by law.”

Friday, February 27, 2015

During the last election, Planned Parenthood and a number of their favored candidates attempted to scare voters by acting like certain prolife candidates were opposed to birth control. Some of those prolife candidates (most notably current U.S. Senators Cory Gardner and Thom Tillis) responded to these claims by announcing that they were in favor of birth control pills being available over-the-counter (OTC). It's tough to claim someone wants to ban birth control when they want to allow it to be should sold OTC.

In an attempt to not get outflanked, Planned Parenthood re-attacked these candidates by claiming making birth controls pills available OTC was designed to raise the price of the pills now that Obamacare required employers to fund contraceptive coverage. According to Politico, they spent $500,000 in North Carolina and $400,000 in Colorado on television ads. They also spent money on radio ads as well.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards also penned an editorial claiming the Republican candidates' plan of making birth controls available OTC would “push women back to the 1950s.”

Richards made this absurd claim after previously claiming the FDA ruling which made emergency contraception (EC) available OTC was “wonderful news” since "women all over the country will soon be able to walk into a pharmacy and pick up emergency
contraception off the shelves, as soon as they need it -- no barriers,
no shame."

Be sure to note the complete lack of need that EC be paid for by insurance back in the dark ages of 2013.

Both the Planned Parenthood ads and the Richards' piece seem to assume a number of factors:

1.) that birth control pills couldn't be available both OTC and by prescription

2.) that women would be apparently unable to choose for themselves between whether they want to pay for birth control OTC if it wasn't covered vs. having to go to annual appointment and get a prescription

3.) that the required inclusion of birth control coverage doesn't raise the price of insurance plans

4.) that all the Republicans they attacked were opposed to insurance reimbursing women for birth control if it was purchased OTC.

Now Planned Parenthood has come full circle according to this article in the Huffington Post. They now are completely in favor of making birth control available OTC as long as it is covered by insurance (even though Richards doesn't even mention that in her statement).

The idea of making birth control available over the counter has been around for a long time and is supported by reproductive health organizations like Planned Parenthood......

Planned Parenthood Action Fund president Cecile Richards said she would applaud making the pill available over the counter.

"We strongly support making birth control available over the counter, as part of our nearly 100-year history of expanding access to birth control," Richards said. "Every woman in America should have access to the birth control method that's best for her, without barriers based on cost, availability, stigma, or any other hurdle."

It's clear that the hundreds of thousands of dollars Planned Parenthood spent attacking prolife candidates over their position in favor of making birth control available OTC was a cynical ploy done solely to help elect pro-choice politicians.

Dr. John C. Willke, an obstetrician who helped establish the modern anti-abortion movement — and whose idea that rape victims could resist conception was widely challenged — died on Friday at his home in Cincinnati. He was 89.

The claim that Willke believed "rape victims could resist conception" is a focal point of the article. Later Rosen writes:

In 1971, the couple wrote “Handbook on Abortion,” which sold an estimated 1.5 million copies and became a touchstone for the anti-abortion movement. The book asserted that pregnancies from rape could be avoided “for all practical purposes.” They later expanded on that notion after a report in The New England Journal of Medicine suggested that rape victims typically experience a level of shock that prevents their bodies from functioning normally.

Your average reader would seemingly come away from that paragraph believing John Willke believed that the bodies of women could "for all practical purposes" prevent pregnancy after rape because of shock. But what's the context of the “for all practical purposes” remark?

Rosen appears to have gotten that information (also note the repeated use of the term “touchstone”) from an AP article from 2012. That article notes:

The book became an instant touchstone for the anti-abortion movement, selling 1.5 million copies at the height of the sexual revolution.

The authors asserted that a douche, vaginal scraping and medications administered quickly after a rape "invariably" prevents pregnancy. "If the rape victim would report her assault properly, there would be, for all practical purposes, no pregnancies from rape," the couple wrote.

It's clear that the “for all practical purposes” remark has absolutely nothing to do with the woman’s body preventing pregnancy because of shock but rather methods taken by physicians or the woman to prevent fertilization.

Rosen knows this yet intentionally leads readers to believe otherwise. When I tweeted to him asking why there is no context to these remarks, I did not receive a reply.

While the New York Times may not agree with Dr. Willke's work in the prolife movement, they should have the decency to not intentionally misrepresent him in an article about his life and death.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan recently wrote an editorial for the Akron Beacon-Journal entitled, "Why I changed my thinking on abortion" in which he describes why he is no longer prolife. It's an editorial he should have written 5 years ago.

Congressman Ryan has been a persona non grata to the prolife movement for more than 5 years. He got kicked off the board of Democrats for Life in 2009. He lied and falsely claimed his removal was because Democrats for Life opposed contraception when they don't. He also pulled an Obama and said the question of when life begins was "above (his) pay grade." After that, he tried to claim he was still prolife after voting in favor of letting Washington, D.C. spend tax dollars on abortion.

The last time he voted in favor of prolife legislation was in 2009, when he cast a yes vote for the Stupak Amendment to Obamacare. That was his only prolife vote in the term. He hasn’t voted prolife since. And it's not like he was a solid prolife vote before that. National Right to Life gave him a 0% voting record in the 2007-2008 term, 80% in 2005-2006 term and 72% in the 2003-2004 term.

What’s interesting is the publicity this editorial has received.

The Hill, Time, USA Today, all have articles on the editorial along with numerous Ohio papers and local papers outside of Ohio. The articles often fail to quote prolifers who recognized Ryan abandoned the prolife movement long ago. Or mention that Ryan is likely running for the U.S. Senate in 2016.

Ryan also has an 8-month-old son, his first child. He told The
Associated Press in an interview that it was not coincidence that the
declaration followed his experience realizing the battery of tests,
check-ups and health decisions involved even in a healthy pregnancy.

"That's, to me, when it
really hit me," Ryan said. "Like, there's no room for Uncle Sam in this
examination room as we're getting test results back, regardless of how
they come out."

It really hit you that it should be legal to kill unborn children while your wife is pregnant with your unborn child? I feel bad for your son when he grows up and reads that.

The pro-choice movement and Planned Parenthood can have Congressman Tim Ryan. The prolife movement doesn't have room for lying, opportunistic politicians who are thinking about abortion while their child is in the womb.

Friday, January 09, 2015

The Washington Post has an article by Lydia DePillis which allows Arizona abortionist Gabrielle Goodrick to whine about how hard it is to be an abortionist in Arizona after the state legislature passed some prolife laws.

In the Post piece, Goodrich reveals a number of things and her practice.

She describes how abortion took over her practice.

Gradually, it just kind of took over my practice. Not only because of patient need, but because of the amount of effort — it just takes over. I have to have RNs now, and monitoring. There’s so much involved in it, so I wouldn’t do that for a few procedures a week. To do more than 5 abortions a month, you have to be a licensed abortion clinic. So now probably 5 percent of my practice is general practice.

She thinks her practice was given “a pass” the first year state inspectors came by.

I don’t have an administrator. I’m just a doctor in a solo practice. So for me to make that change was pretty traumatic, when the state comes through [to inspect]. The first time, in 2011, we had coffee in the break room, she looked over my policies, everything was perfect, and that was that. I think they just gave everyone a pass the first year, because they didn’t know what they were doing. And then the next year, they came through, and it was like the Gestapo. I didn’t have a policy for this or that. It was very nasty.

Arizona's 24 hour waiting period is bad for patients but really bad for her

The waiting period was probably the worst for patients. You have to do the meeting first, it has to be with a physician, you can’t have a nurse do it. That has been an incredible burden on women, and on us. I have to meet with every single patient. The law says we can’t charge for that visit.